Services by which a user can check an ever-changing congestion state at a station anytime, anywhere, in real-time have been recently provided, owing to progress in IT (Information Technology).
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application, Publication No. 2009-110152 which is to be referred to as Patent Document 1 hereinafter discloses, under a subhead “Means for Solving the Problems”, that “The congestion estimation device includes a motion information generating part 13 for calculating motion information, from an image sequence of an image generating part 11, a texture information generating part 15 for generating texture information of the image, a reference motion information generating part 14 for holding and updating reference motion information serving as a reference of motion, a reference texture information generating part 16 for holding and updating reference texture information for determining the presence of the person, a motion information determining part 18 for determining the presence of the motion, a texture information determining part 19 for determining the presence of texture information same to the person, and a stay determination part 20 for determining the existence of the person by receiving determination results of the motion information and the texture information, various states of every individual area is determined using the determination of a similarity using the presence of the motion and a texture, and the degree of congestion is thereby estimated to provide an index of a congestion state and information of the presence of an abnormal state.”